37 INDIVIDUAL BLESSING AND NATIONAL FEASTING And thou shalt rejoice in thy feast, thou, and thy son, and thy daughter, and thy manservant, and thy maidservant, and the Levite, the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, that are within thy gates. Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the LORD thy God in the place which the LORD shall choose: because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice. Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles: and they shall not appear before the LORD empty: Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD thy God which he hath given thee (Deut. 16:14-17).
This chapter in Deuteronomy recapitulates the laws governing the three mandatory national feasts. These were clearly ecclesiastical laws, meaning land laws. All three feasts had to be celebrated by the males of the nation at a central location. The theocentric principle governing these three festival laws is the national covenant, which was grounded in an ecclesiastical oath, whose visible mark was circumcision. The negative sanction attached to the law of the feasts was excommunication. The text does not state this explicitly, but the requirement of the festival laws was a journey to the central city where the priestly sacrifices were to be performed.
This does not mean that there was complete separation between the civil and ecclesiastical covenants. At the feast of Booths (Tabernacles), one year in seven, the entire law had to be read publicly to the assembled nation (Deut. 31:10-13). This included civil law. This event took place in the sabbatical year, the year of debt release (v. 10). Strangers had to attend (v. 12). While strangers were not citizens in the sense of judges, they were beneficiaries of the Mosaic civil law. The implication is that attendance at the reading of the law, which included civil law, was required. Then what would have been the appropriate civil sanction against strangers who failed to attend? The law is silent. It was not loss of citizenship; they were not citizens. It was not expulsion from the land; they could have been property owners in the cities. Property rights were defended in Israel; this is basic to the rule of law. There does not appear to have been a civil sanction for non-attendance. Presumably, the sanction was ecclesiastical: exclusion from the right to participate at the national feasts, where the poor and strangers were to be welcomed into the family feasts. The civil covenant was not the focus of concern in the festival laws, except one year in seven. The ecclesiastical covenant, which extended to strangers who wanted to participate, was the concern.
Nevertheless, there was one civil implication of the stranger's refusal to participate in the feasts. A circumcised stranger was on the road to full citizenship. Israel allowed outsiders to apply for citizenship, i.e., membership in the congregation. Depending on which nation he came from, this took either three generations or ten (Deut. 23:3-8). Any refusal on his part to participate in the national feasts would have led to his excommunication. He would no longer have had lawful access to the Passover, which circumcised strangers possessed (Ex. 12:48). His excommunication would have revoked the covenantal validity of his circumcision. This would have delayed his heirs' inheritance of citizenship for an extra generation. Once again, we see the unbreakable relationship governing biblical law, oath-sanctions, and lawful inheritance.
Covenantal Participation The five representatives listed in this law were identified repeatedly in the Mosaic law as representatives of the oppressed. The manservant and maidservant were under the jurisdiction of the family. The fatherless and the widow were not part of the family, but they were to be invited by other families to participate in the prosperity of the community. Finally the stranger or resident alien (geyr) who had placed himself under God's law was to be invited.
Verse 12 provides the reason: "And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt: and thou shalt observe and do these statutes." Israel's experience in Egypt was representative of injustice and oppression. What had happened to them in Egypt should not happen to the politically and economical weak in Israel. Those who were under the law were to be treated well. The issue was the covenant. Those who were under the civil covenant were bound by oath to obey the law. The rule of law was mandatory in Israel. Israel's righteousness before God, like every judge's righteousness, was manifested in the courts.
One law shall be to him that is homeborn, and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you" (Ex. 12:49).
One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you (Num. 15:16).
Ye shall have one law for him that sinneth through ignorance, both for him that is born among the children of Israel, and for the stranger that sojourneth among them (Num. 15:29).
Cursed be he that perverteth the judgment of the stranger, fatherless, and widow. And all the people shall say, Amen (Deut. 27:19).
These were civil commandments. They had to do with civil courts: the place where negative sanctions were imposed. But the requirement went beyond mere negative sanctions; they involved positive sanctions: "He doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment. Love ye therefore the stranger: for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt" (Deut. 10:18-19). The laws governing the three annual ecclesiastical feasts were part of this general obligation to love the stranger. The positive sanctions of participation were ecclesiastical. Mosaic civil law did not invoke positive sanctions, since positive civil sanctions can only be funded by the imposition of negative sanctions on others.(1)
Expensive Celebrations In my commentary on Leviticus, I devoted space to a consideration of the economics of the three centralized feasts. I concluded that the economic burden must have been in the range of at least 15 percent of gross income, not counting travel and lodging costs, and not counting forfeited income. Adding these costs, the total burden may have been closer to 25 percent, the estimate of Rabbinic tradition.(2) This was a very heavy burden. It had to be borne in faith. But the increased wealth of the nation would have pointed to the reliability of God's covenantal promises. The law specifically stated that the testimony of personal economic prosperity was to be considered by each celebrant in estimating what he could afford to spend at the festivals. In faith, men were to open their wallets in a common celebration three times a year.
The Israelites were told that God would reward them, and that they had to celebrate this bounty. The blessings of God were guaranteed: "Because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice" (v. 15b). This promise was corporate. Yet there was also the assumption of individual blessings: "Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD thy God which he hath given thee" (v. 17). The individual blessings would vary; hence, the individual was required to give of his increase in celebration. He was not to hold back in his rejoicing, for God had not held back His blessings.
Moses was telling them that God's deliverance of the nation out of Egyptian bondage and wilderness wandering was the down payment on the promised inheritance. Their actual blessings in the land would verify the continuing presence of God among His people. This means that economic growth was basic to the covenant's system of sanctions. The people would be able to afford the three national celebrations. While these celebrations would be very expensive, they would nonetheless be affordable to the poorest man in Israel. Every man could in confidence walk away from his labors for up to seven weeks a year, depending on how far his home was from Jerusalem.
The blessings would fund the celebrations. This was God's promise of great economic blessings because the costs of celebration would be high. He was promising His covenantal blessings. These blessings would confirm His covenant. They would verify His presence among them, not just in a spiritual sense but in an economic sense. The covenant's blessings would be visible in history. He would be visible in these blessings. Their mandatory response was to take a large portion of their blessings and reinvest this in national celebrations. They would come together in the presence of God because God had blessed them nationally and individually, as promised in the Mosaic law itself. God was with them individually in their local communities, as seen in their economic prosperity. Their mandatory response was to take a substantial portion of their wealth and squander it in celebration. In this sense, the celebrations were to serve as exercises in faith. God called on them to pour their profits back into the nation. The nation was not to be regarded as a political entity. On the contrary, the lion's share went into celebrations. The State could not lay claim to a large portion of the nation's wealth because that otherwise discretionary income was not legally discretionary. One important effect of this law was the binding of both the State and the priesthood.
Keeping Trim Not only were church and State to be kept trim by this law, so were the people. The mandated festivals can be considered as a national military fitness program. God's holy army would be in training. Every man had to walk to the nation's central place of worship three times a year. Only those who were on a journey could skip two of the three feasts: Firstfruits and Booths.(3)
Had the celebrations been legal in their home towns, they would have been tempted to consume their capital in calories. This would have been a form of gluttony. This was prohibited by the Mosaic law. Gluttony was a mark of rebellion. Parents were required to act as prosecuting agents in a covenant lawsuit against gluttonous sons: "And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard" (Deut. 21:20). "For the drunkard and the glutton shall come to poverty: and drowsiness shall clothe a man with rags" (Prov. 23:21). Thus, Solomon warned: "When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: And put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat" (Prov. 23:1-3).
There was no prohibition against eating meat. In fact, the opposite was true. The people were to enjoy the fat of the meat they brought to be sacrificed. In Moses' parting account of God's dealings with Israel, past and future, he focused on fat. Israelites were allowed to eat the fat of the land, including animals. But the people were not to become bloated. A nation of obese people would testify to the nation's subordination to false gods. Moses adopted the imagery of obesity to describe the nation's rebellious spiritual condition.
For the LORD'S portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: So the LORD alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape. But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not (Deut. 32:9-17).
The Mosaic law encouraged the consumption of fat, but it also mandated exercise. God's gifts were not to be misused. Men were not to shovel their net income into their mouths. They were not to eat their own futures. In an agricultural society, wealth is understood as having to do with excess food. Being fat in such a society would have been an aspect of what today is called "conspicuous consumption." Fat was allowed by the Mosaic law. The language of fatness was invoked by Moses to symbolize God's blessings. But fat was not to compromise anyone's physical mobility. A man's extra weight had to be paid for on journeys to Jerusalem three times a year. There was a strong incentive for the obese person to reduce his intake of food. The kind of obesity that is the result of lust for food was equated with the lust to distort one's senses with alcohol to the point of irresponsibility.(4) Fat was allowed -- indeed, it was mandated at the feasts. Alcohol was also allowed (Deut. 14:26). But gluttony and drunkenness were prohibited.
Conclusion God promised covenantal blessings for Israel's covenantal faithfulness. The national festivals were part of this system. They were expensive events that required the men of Israel to gather in one place at the same time. These festivals were God's way of establishing a sense of national community under His law. Israel would be more than tribes and cities. Israel was a holy nation.
Footnotes:
1. Double restitution could be considered as a positive sanction. It is the restoration of the thing stolen plus a penalty. But this negative economic sanction is imposed on a convicted malefactor, not the general public. The law considers the economic burden associated with the loss imposed by theft. These burdens are more than the mere loss of the object. The property owner's legitimate sphere of authority was violated by the thief. The victim perceives the injustice of the theft, which adds to his estimated value of the stolen item. So, in this sense, multiple restitution is not a positive sanction; it is the restoration of the status quo ante. The victim is not given something for nothing by the civil government. He is being compensated for his lost time, his lost property, his sense of injustice, and the risk factor imposed on him by the thief that the civil authorities might not have discovered the identity of the thief and the jury might not have convicted him.
2. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), p. 18.
3. I presume this because of the law governing Passover, which allowed a late celebration because of journeys (Num. 9:10).
4. The judicial issue of drunkenness is responsibility before God. Any substance or practice (e.g., a discipline that produces a demonic trance) that distorts one's senses so that one becomes unable to judge his surroundings responsibly must be avoided. An exception is where the individual places himself legally and physically under the authority of others, as is the case in the administration of anesthetics.
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